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I’ve unfortunately neglected this page. Within the next few weeks my daughter will turn 21 and be married. My wife and I are getting ready to build a new house. I’ve been a bit busy. All poor excuses for not taking a few minutes a day to work on this project. So, for your enjoyment, something shot on film.

Last night was a good run all the way to Fort Stockton. As usual though is was up at 3:30 so it was an early start. The plan was to make it to El Paso for breakfast. I’ve never been to El Paso before. It was still dark when I got to the edge of town. It looked like a city in a pit. Even in the dark it looked like a place that just eats things, where they get trapped. I wasn’t feeling very hungry looking at it from I-10. The sun had come up enough by the end of town that I could make out what the interior looked like. Darkness looks good on El Paso. So here I sit at the Fork in the Road diner in Las Cruces. Trying to write on my phone. It’s a bit slow and frustrating.

I did make one stop this morning. Van Horn. I have a history with Van Horn. My cousin has some land there and we’ve made a couple trips out there. South of town its like a lunar surface with cactus. Fascinating to a gulf coast kid like me. It was 5am but I had to stop and say hello to a place I’ve come to enjoy. The neon of El Capitan’s sign begged for a picture.

In a few hours I’ll be setting out on a little road trip to Arizona. If time and available internet allows I’ll try to keep the progress updated on here. Photos may take a bit longer since I have a bag full of film that I want to use. Maybe I’ll break down and give the camera phone a real try.

If anyone is interested, I have some prints being displayed at the Houston Public Library-Downtown as part of a show with the Houston Photographic Society. They will be up for about six weeks. 500 McKinney St.

The sub-title of this blog is The Hockley Photographer, and I seem to not have a lot of content to back that up. So I set out to remedy that a bit this morning. I had intended to get some shots of the lunar eclipse at sunrise this morning, but the clouds had other ideas. Instead I loaded up some film and Donna and I headed into Waller for breakfast at Ranchito. Still grey and dreary when we were done, a quick spin around downtown Waller to look for potential new studio locations (more on that at some other time) killed some time until there was enough light to work with the 4×5. Funny, it didn’t warm up any.

We charged down the road into the thriving metropolis of downtown Hockley. Okay, not so thriving anymore. But there, in all it’s boarded up glory, was Garrett’s Grocery. It’s where I had my first job that didn’t involve being on the farm. I kept that job for several years too until I left for college. It took up most of my days after school, weekends, and summers. Those were the heady days before the bypass took all the traffic away and I thought $0.50 over minimum wage was a fantastic amount of money. I guess in 1991 for a fifteen year old kid it was.

These days, Roy has long since closed the store. It lasted for several years after the traffic left but it was never the same. It was nostalgic looking back and remembering how it was. Not just a store, but the un-official community center, town hall, gossip center, and at the time-parking lot beer joint. All that is gone though; and nothing has really took it’s place as the all ages daily gathering place. I can’t say how or why that happened either. Moving a road shouldn’t move the heart of a community. But Hockley is a ghost town now. Maybe that’s why I’ve avoided the five minutes to drive over there for a simple photograph, my youth is a ghost now. And, not really by choice.